540 



ANNUAL KKl'OKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



shares.^* The latter may, it is true, have belonged to man-drawn 

 implements; but in any case it seems fairly certain that the Danube 

 Basin knew the true traction plow by the beginning of the second 

 millennium B. C 



It was perhaps both through the Balkans and either directly from 

 Asia Minor or else through Crete that the use of the ox-drawn plow 

 spread to Greece. For Hesiod speaks of two types as in use concur- 

 rently hi his day.^* Of these, one, very simple in construction, may 

 possibly have been derived from Central Europe; wliile the other, 

 considerably more developed, points rather to contacts with the Aegean 

 area or possibly with regions even farther to the east. Both forms 

 have single handles and also slades, but apparently not metal shares. 



KiGUUE 7.— Ancient Greek i)low. (From a vase-puintini^ by Nikosthenos.) 



Our earliest knowledge of the ancient Greek plow we owe almost en- 

 tirely to Homer and Hesiod, and, a little later, to the vase painters 

 (fig. 7). 



In Italy there seems to have been little in the way of true agricul- 

 ture durhig Neolithic tmies.^^ Not until the Bronze Age is the trac- 

 tion-plow found there. Perhaps it was introduced by the Terre- 

 mare people — Dr. Randall Maclver's "Proto-Italici" — invaders from 

 the northeast who appeared in Upper Italy somewhere around 1700 

 B. C, brmging with them a highly developed agriculture.^^ Our 

 earliest coiicrete evidence for the plow m the peninsula is probably 

 that found In certain rock drawings in the Ligurian Alps.^^ These 

 are generally believed to date from the second millemiium before our 



** Regarding the intrusive elements, apparently deriving from southern Russia, which apiiear in Danubian 

 n, of. Childe, Dawn of European civilization, p. 177, 1925; on p. 179 of the same work, Danubian II is dated 

 c. 2500-2200 B. C. 



" Works and days, pp. 427-436. 



" Maelver, Kiindall, Italy before the Romans, p. 41, 192S. 



" Maclver, Raud;ill, op. clt., pp. 35, 36. 



•« For an account of these, see Burkitt, M. C, Rock carvings in the Italian Alps, Antiquity, vol. 3, 

 pp. 166-164, 1929. 



